TuteTibiImperes:They had a huge head start over the competition, but focused the offerings primarily on business users.

Consumers watch movies and listen to music on their phones. Nobody had the mobile bandwidth for that back in the day. Wifi wasn't even widespread.

Smartphones just dealt with text and sometimes pictures, because they had dial-up speeds to work with.

Windows Phone is eventually going to do very well. 7 million units shipped in a single quarter is probably more than Palm shipped of the Treo grand total (talking out of my ass). That's enough to reach critical mass, where developers will put time into making apps. Once enterprise shops start shipping their .Net desktop apps on Windows phone, the same lockin cycle will begin, and lazy IT managers everywhere will breathe a sigh of relief. No longer will they have to worry about hiring developers for "objective-c", whatever that is.

Windows goons have effectively waited out the iPhone/Android "craze" and it will be business as usual for the worst technologists in the game.

mccallcl:TuteTibiImperes: They had a huge head start over the competition, but focused the offerings primarily on business users.

Consumers watch movies and listen to music on their phones. Nobody had the mobile bandwidth for that back in the day. Wifi wasn't even widespread.

Smartphones just dealt with text and sometimes pictures, because they had dial-up speeds to work with.

Windows Phone is eventually going to do very well. 7 million units shipped in a single quarter is probably more than Palm shipped of the Treo grand total (talking out of my ass). That's enough to reach critical mass, where developers will put time into making apps. Once enterprise shops start shipping their .Net desktop apps on Windows phone, the same lockin cycle will begin, and lazy IT managers everywhere will breathe a sigh of relief. No longer will they have to worry about hiring developers for "objective-c", whatever that is.

Windows goons have effectively waited out the iPhone/Android "craze" and it will be business as usual for the worst technologists in the game.

/onion, meet belt

True, it wasn't practical to stream music or video to a mobile phone ten years ago, but the original iPhone launched without 3G speeds as well. The whole concept of a consumer focused easy to use UI combined with a single source app store was revolutionary for phones. Google saw the light pretty early and rushed to get into the game, MS followed suit not too far after, Blackberry drug its feet for so long that it may be all over.

MS, Apple, and Google all have the benefit of nearly limitless piles of cash. MS has shown in the past that they're willing to keep investing in a product that they're losing money on until it breaks through (look at the original Xbox which played second fiddle to the PS2 compared to the launch of the 360 where they were able to pull ahead for a while).

MS and Apple have another benefit Google doesn't - they're both players in the full desktop/laptop market. The next 'killer app' is going to be full integration between your phone, your tablet, and your full computer. Right now both ecosystems are a bit fractured, MS's more so with two incompatible tablet OSes (Windows 8 RT and Windows 8 Pro) but MS has stated that their goal is to combine everything into one. Imagine being able to buy a program for your PC, and automatically having appropriate versions (designed for screen size and hardware capabilities) install on your tablet and your phone.

That's the future, and MS is arguably in the best position to do it. With Windows Phone 8 they've already moved the OS to the NT kernel, so designing an application that runs on your home computer and your phone becomes almost as trivial and recompiling for x86 vs ARM, and if Intel can get Atom to hit the same performance per watt and total power efficiency of ARM chips (and they're already pretty close) there won't even be a need to deal with that.

TuteTibiImperes:The next 'killer app' is going to be full integration between your phone, your tablet, and your full computer.

I don't believe this to be true, in the sense that you'll have apps that run on all three devices. You may have developers writing apps for all three devices, and buying one gives you access to another for free. I can tell you as a mobile developer, mobile apps are their own beast entirely. They are way more expensive to write, screen-for-screen. They are more expensive for the end-user to operate (in terms of data and battery drain). The usage pattern is take out your phone, swipe to unlock, tap, maybe one more tap, put it away. You care about context, like where the phone is and what direction it's pointing. You make apps that take pictures or videos, whereas a desktop app wouldn't have that feature most likely. A lot of apps have no place on the desktop at all, like foursquare. Plus the web has killed compiled desktop apps for all but the most dusty-ass IT shops.

If anything, I'm seeing more fragmentation between the desktop and mobile as time goes on. Mobile is a disruptive technology, and it doesn't want to get chained to the technology it's disrupting.

TuteTibiImperes:The whole concept of a consumer focused easy to use UI combined with a single source app store was revolutionary for phones.

The App Store was made possible by a couple of key developments: .mac and the iTunes store gave Apple the skills and infrastructure it needed to host such a thing (and it still used to go down all the time back in the day). The revolutionary iOS UI was developed by the foremost user interface organization in the world, under the watchful eye of the industry's most notorious professional asshole, at the peak of his abilities. The superiority of the UI and industrial design drove app developers to the device. Even this almost didn't work. It was a miracle that the dev community embraced the worst development system on the planet and suffered a 30% tax on revenue, while having their work restricted by the app store guidelines.

I bet Microsoft was pretty surprised at Apple's distinct lack of developer ass-kissing and enterprise pandering. Seems as though developers were willing to try almost anything instead of running their own distribution network from scratch. The app store stole a ton of talent from the enterprise market, where devs were working for a %.00001 share of the profit. It was a huge surprise and a lot of people didn't see it coming.

This round is going to be about quietly grinding your way to a 15% market share, while keeping profits up.

Round 3 is going to be about fighting over the limited pool of developers making more complex apps for your platform. Phones have a lifespan of like 18 months. It's still anybody's game and Microsoft has 3 million developers that are effectively locked out of the mobile space without Windows. Even if everybody who programs .Net buys a Windows phone, that will be enough to keep them in the vertical markets that use the same device for ten years at a time. Ask SAP, there's plenty to be made there.

mccallcl:TuteTibiImperes: The next 'killer app' is going to be full integration between your phone, your tablet, and your full computer.

I don't believe this to be true, in the sense that you'll have apps that run on all three devices. You may have developers writing apps for all three devices, and buying one gives you access to another for free. I can tell you as a mobile developer, mobile apps are their own beast entirely. They are way more expensive to write, screen-for-screen. They are more expensive for the end-user to operate (in terms of data and battery drain). The usage pattern is take out your phone, swipe to unlock, tap, maybe one more tap, put it away. You care about context, like where the phone is and what direction it's pointing. You make apps that take pictures or videos, whereas a desktop app wouldn't have that feature most likely. A lot of apps have no place on the desktop at all, like foursquare. Plus the web has killed compiled desktop apps for all but the most dusty-ass IT shops.

If anything, I'm seeing more fragmentation between the desktop and mobile as time goes on. Mobile is a disruptive technology, and it doesn't want to get chained to the technology it's disrupting.

Local compiled applications make sense for a lot of things still. Anything dealing with large files (video editing, high end photo editing, audio mixing, etc) anything that requires a lot of processing power (a lot of the previous stuff plus 3D games) and anything that isn't forgiving of latency. Sure, more stuff will be going towards 'the cloud' but I'd much rather use a local app over a web app for most things.

I'm not arguing for the same exact version across all platforms. You wouldn't want to run try to navigate Photoshop's UI on a 4" phone screen, nor would the hardware make actually doing anything very fun. Some applications will remain squarely rooted in one type of device, others could be very usable across devices. Think of a game like a new FPS - you have the full version on the desktop, a tablet version with touch and motion sensor based controls and reduced graphical requirements, and an even more stripped down version you could use on your phone, maybe with some augmented reality type stuff thrown in. For a non-game example how about the ubiquitous Office Suite? MS is already doing this - you can use the full version of Office on your desktop/laptop, a slightly slimmed down version on a Windows RT tablet, and still have the ability to view all of the files and edit in some ways on your Windows 8 Phone. I'm sure there will be developers who can come up with creative ways to add extra functionality and convenience from their applications being available across multiple devices.

TuteTibiImperes: The whole concept of a consumer focused easy to use UI combined with a single source app store was revolutionary for phones.

The App Store was made possible by a couple of key developments: .mac and the iTunes store gave Apple the skills and infrastructure it needed to host such a thing (and it still used to go down all the time back in the day). The revolutionary iOS UI was developed by the foremost user interface organization in the world, under the watchful eye of the industry's most notorious professional asshole, at the peak of his abilities. The superiority of the UI and industrial design drove app developers to the device. Even this almost didn't work. It was a miracle that the dev community embraced the worst development system on the planet and suffered a 30% tax on revenue, while having their work restricted by the app store guidelines.I bet Microsoft was pretty surprised at Apple's distinct lack of developer ass-kissing and enterprise pandering. Seems as though developers were willing to try almost anything instead of running their own distribution network from scratch. The app store stole a ton of talent from the enterprise market, where devs were working for a %.00001 share of the profit. It was a huge surprise and a lot of people didn't see it coming.This round is going to be about quietly grinding your way to a 15% market share, while keeping profits up.Round 3 is going to be about fighting over the limited pool of developers making more complex apps for your platform. Phones have a lifespan of like 18 months. It's still anybody's game and Microsoft has 3 million developers that are effectively locked out of the mobile space without Windows. Even if everybody who programs .Net buys a Windows phone, that will be enough to keep them in the vertical markets that use the same device for ten years at a time. Ask SAP, there's plenty to be made there. ...I don't see there ever being an issue with a shortage of developers. If anything the mobile app boom has brought in more talent. It may take a lot of time, expertise, and money to develop the best mobile apps, but a lot of people are cutting their software development teeth for the first time with mobile apps, and doing some creative things. The ability to sell (almost) direct to the public and have another company (whether Google, Apple, or MS) handle the infrastructure of actually delivery your program to those who want it as well as some advertising and promotion makes giving up a cut of the revenue worthwhile to a lot of smaller shops that don't have established connections and experience with publishing.

I also think you're shortchanging the usable life of a phone. Most contracts are 24 months, and most people don't upgrade before the end of that time. I used an iPhone 3GS for three years before upgrading to a Lumia 920. I know people still using first generation Android phones, and there are plenty of people still using dumb phones that they've had for four years or more. Still, one of the greatest strengths of Android in the marketplace is one of its greatest weaknesses here - the sheer variety of hardware out there (not to mention skins, UI overlays, and different versions of the OS floating about). On Android you have everything from 1080p quad-core beasts with 2 gigs of RAM to 320p single core pre-paid phones with half a gig of RAM running two or three versions back of the current version of Android, both being sold new right now. While MS doesn't have the device uniformity that Apple does, they have done a better job at enforcing certain standards across the board for WP8 than Google has for Android, as well as doing a better job of making sure carriers don't meddle with OS updates.

MithrandirBooga:I chose Windows Phone over the competitors purely for battery life. My phone lasts 2 full days on a charge with moderate use. My friends are always complaining that their Androids run out of power before the end of the day.

I've never understood the complaints about app selection. There's hundreds of thousands of apps available, and I've found ones to do everything I ever want to do with my phone.

Yup yup. I've also never understood the claim that raw app quantity was a measure of anything meaningful.

The fact that ios has 50x more fart soundboard and flashlight apps means teh market has spoken?

TuteTibiImperes:Marine1: Electrify: After looking at the cluster that is the Galaxy S4, I could see Android sales slipping over the next year.

/retarded amount of toggles in the notification tray and only 9GB of app storage//HTC One might be better, but most users will go for the slower One X+ for obvious reasons

You have to wonder just how long Samsung will stick with Android.

Well, they can't make iOS devices, they've made Windows Phones in the past but they weren't as good as the ones made by others, Symbian is dying, and Blackberry doesn't seem likely to license their OS.

Android is pretty much their only option unless they want to release something with an in-house developed OS. They have some brand recognition now, so if the Galaxy S5 ran SamungOS instead of Android a lot of people might buy it just on the name, but when they discovered that they couldn't download and use all of the Android apps they were used to things could turn ugly.

Google hasn't done very much as far as putting restrictions or strict guidelines on hardware manufacturers or network operators anyway though, so there's probably little reason for Samsung to want to change.

Well, they do have Bada and Tizen.

It just sort of stuns me that they haven't done more to monetize that gargantuan pile of handsets they've sold. If and when they do, they might run in to Google's vendor lock-in model for Android.

And the ATIV S was an absolute dud. WP8 didn't catch on fire, sure, but that doesn't mean you hobble the device's launch even further with delays and non-existent OEM support. It was a case of "let's make a vanilla product and not support it" if there ever was one.

TuteTibiImperes:Local compiled applications make sense for a lot of things still.

Yes and no. From a usability standpoint, yes. There are still things the web doesn't get quite right from a business perspective either. It doesn't do DRM and hates any kind of IP protection. On the usability side, it takes a lot of talent to take a web app to local-level usability. It's possible though, take a look at soundcloud.com, that site is a marvel.

Anyway, developing native apps is much more expensive than for the web, in terms of per-user reach/dollar. It comes in real handy when you actually want to get paid for your work, though. The 30% tax from the app store beats having your app pirated by 75% of its users and still having to pay to distribute it yourself.

TuteTibiImperes:MS is already doing this - you can use the full version of Office on your desktop/laptop, a slightly slimmed down version on a Windows RT tablet, and still have the ability to view all of the files and edit in some ways on your Windows 8 Phone.

Apple does the same thing with Garageband. It's expensive as balls. I hear it's easier on the Microsoft mobile stack, but I haven't tried yet.

TuteTibiImperes:I don't see there ever being an issue with a shortage of developers.

Try hiring five to work on something. I could go on about the shortage of developers and how you can see examples of this, but one way it's easy to tell is the difference between consumer apps and enterprise or vertical apps. Pay attention the next time you're out shopping. There are two kinds of POS systems: Square Register on an iPad like some Buck Rogers shiat, or that same-old terrible IBM hardware running Aloha with a cash drawer that the cashier just pushes back in out of instinct. That's because out of all the companies making POS systems, only Square can find enough talent to fill a room.

All the vertical and enterprise apps are on hold. They are not getting written because there is too much money to be made making fart apps and high-end shopping membership apps and $5500 one-offs for record labels.

TuteTibiImperes:Most contracts are 24 months, and most people don't upgrade before the end of that time.

Phones break or get lost. Many users do upgrade every 18 months. Even if they don't, OS upgrades drag all the developers' apps along with them, and the phone can't run my app, therefore the user is dead to me. 18 months, I'm telling you.

I'm thinking of getting a new phone in October/September(my contract just ran out but I'm going overseas in September so I can sit on getting a new phone until then).I had a Sony X-Peria which was such a POS that I'm boycotting Sony for the rest of my life, I sent it back to get fixed because it wouldn't accept a charge anymore(or data) and was told I'd broken it somehow in my first two months of owning it and my warranty was now invalidated. So I took it to a repair guy who swore he could fix it based on what Sony told me was broken with it but that doing the repair would absolutely void my warranty, given that it was already dead I told him to try anyway. He told me that it wasn't what they said it was, it was actually probably the motherboard or something similar to it and that Sony had just been lazy and not bothered to check it properly. However, now I couldn't send it back and it couldn't charge a battery anymore so... sorry you're SOL. The Sony people never got back to me when I complained so I gave up, I had a year and a half left on my contract at this stage.

19 months later I've kept the thing alive by buying a second battery and a lithium battery charger and just not giving a fark about what happened to the phone. The screen is scratched up to hell and back now but it still works well enough. I threw out the cover-case for it because I stopped caring, I've dropped the phone from a bicycle and had it scratch along the road for a few meters while the battery was driven over. I've just stopped caring if it died and it has somehow thrived under my oppression. I put files onto it by emailing them to myself and receiving them via Wifi because my computers don't have Bluetooth. I'm actually a bit better off because I don't have to plug my phone into a computer or the wall to charge it to full every day, I just replace the battery when I'm running low.

My next phone will be a Nokia. Every phone I've had except this Sony phone was a Nokia and they just worked everytime. Most of them were second hand(my friend would dump their phones on me whenever they upgraded for years, no-one does that anymore because everyones phones die around the time they're able to upgrade). I know that Nokia has had a major shift in the last few years but I don't really care. I trust them and liked playing with WP8 when I had a fiddle with it a few months back, so I'll be the only one of my friends to go for it and I'll see how it goes.

The lesson here is never buy Sony. The thing was tough once it broke, but not Nokia tough. I once cut my mouth open when someone threw my Nokia phone at my face. Damn thing was still working, just baptised a little bit in my blood.

Marine1:And the ATIV S was an absolute dud. WP8 didn't catch on fire, sure, but that doesn't mean you hobble the device's launch even further with delays and non-existent OEM support. It was a case of "let's make a vanilla product and not support it" if there ever was one.

I had the original Samsung Focus, which was a WP7 launch model. At that point maybe it was more understandable to have a mediocre, generic Windows Phone handset since there wasn't a truly great WP7 phone pre-Lumia, but now? No.

The 92x and HTC 8X blow it out of the water and honestly are the equals of Galaxies and iPhones... And Samsung tries the same generic, unimaginative phone for Windows Phone and seems surprised when it fails.

TuteTibiImperes:Electrify: After looking at the cluster that is the Galaxy S4, I could see Android sales slipping over the next year.

/retarded amount of toggles in the notification tray and only 9GB of app storage//HTC One might be better, but most users will go for the slower One X+ for obvious reasons

I thought the S4 had a lot of positive press for the launch, though I haven't looked at it too closely.

What would be the reason for taking the One X+ over the HTC One? Cheaper?

The same reason why someone who has done virtually no market research would choose an iPhone 4S over an iPhone 4. The naming lends itself for one to deduct that the One X+ is more cutting edge than the One. That said, Considering the fact that it is cheaper, has more storage, and uses a Tegra 3 chip for exclusive games does mean you are getting a very fine piece of hardware.

TuteTibiImperes:Marine1: Electrify: After looking at the cluster that is the Galaxy S4, I could see Android sales slipping over the next year.

/retarded amount of toggles in the notification tray and only 9GB of app storage//HTC One might be better, but most users will go for the slower One X+ for obvious reasons

You have to wonder just how long Samsung will stick with Android.

Well, they can't make iOS devices, they've made Windows Phones in the past but they weren't as good as the ones made by others, Symbian is dying, and Blackberry doesn't seem likely to license their OS.

Android is pretty much their only option unless they want to release something with an in-house developed OS. They have some brand recognition now, so if the Galaxy S5 ran SamungOS instead of Android a lot of people might buy it just on the name, but when they discovered that they couldn't download and use all of the Android apps they were used to things could turn ugly.

Google hasn't done very much as far as putting restrictions or strict guidelines on hardware manufacturers or network operators anyway though, so there's probably little reason for Samsung to want to change.

Guess this could bring back Bada?

Seriously though, I have nothing but good things to say about Samsung. While I've read about the occasional bad experience, in my experience they remain as the last mass electronics manufacturer to build things which don't break. The only Samsung product I've ever owned which died due to general use was a CRT TV, after about 10 years. While others have more user friendly designs, Samsung tends to make it count where it counts most: performance and reliability.

This is what saddens me most about the S4. There is a line between not being the most user friendly, and completely ignoring the consumer experience, and Samsung crossed it with the S4. Above the notifications pull down menu, there are EIGHTEEN different toggles to choose from! Give the device to someone coming from an iPhone, and they will be overwhelmed - let alone an older person getting their first smartphone.

The S3 has a number of different toggles for gimmicky features, but they are placed in the settings menu. The only ones I have on are the ones that keep the screen from going out when looking at it (which is far from perfect, but better than nothing I guess) and the ability to call someone I am texting by raising the phone to my ear. I keep these ones on and use my phone as if these features are automatic by default. I don't need options to enable or disable them instantly, clogging up the quick toggle menu! And I am sure others don't want them making using their new device an intimidating experience either!

Did they do ANY product testing at all before releasing it?!

The S4 Google Edition cannot come out soon enough, Hopefully by the fall it is released to carriers before too much damage is done to the brand, and if Samsung releases a new version of TouchWiz for the S5, it is more streamlined than the current version (bonus points if they make it appear as close to stock Android as possible).